The present invention relates to toy vehicles, particularly toy vehicles having mechanisms for rotating body portions and/or simulated weapons.
Toy vehicles having mechanisms for opening portions of the body of the vehicle are known. For example, several embodiments of toy vehicles are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,334,078 of Hippely et al. In Hippely et al., linkage mechanisms are used to open and close portions of the toy vehicle body to simulate the opening and closing of the jaws of a creature.
Further, toy vehicles are known which have mechanisms for projecting or moving a simulated weapon relative to the remainder of the toy vehicle. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,249,339 of Crain et al. discloses a toy space vehicle that includes a complex mechanism which opens two hatch-like doorways while simultaneously rotating a simulated weapon about a pivot so that the weapon projects outwardly from the interior of the space vehicle through the open hatchway. Another example of a toy vehicle having a mechanism which projects a simulated weapon from the toy vehicle is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,022,884 of Hippely et al., which discloses in FIG. 8, a toy truck having a hatch and a missile that rotate on a common axis to alternately close the hatch or project the missile through the opened hatch.
It would be desirable to provide a toy vehicle which had a mechanism that opened portions of the vehicle body and simultaneously moved a simulated weapon through a path of motion more complex than simple rotation about a pivot, so as to increase the play value, without the complexity of existing toy vehicles.